Nail Art: A Source Of Life Lessons

Here’s a little personal information for you: at the moment, I’m going through the break-up of a long-term relationship. It’s awful and sad, and while I could regale you with tales of why it didn’t work out (and maybe one of these days I will) I’d like to tell you instead about how I’m doing things like putting on fake nails and nail art to distract myself. OK? OK.

So I always wear my nails super short. Like, I hack them off as low as they’ll go and then get annoyed as soon as they grow past the tips of my fingers. But secretly, I also have a special place in my heart for really long, really decorative, really impractical nails. It’s why I mean it when I say that I love duck nails. It’s also why I post pictures of nail art on here all the time — not just because we’re a beauty blog, but because it’s my passion.

So here I am, bored and sad and drinking wine and watching Bravo, and I realized: what better way to further remove myself from reality than to go buy some press-on nails, some nail stickers, and put together a little phalange collage party?

Here are the materials that I started with:

Press-on nails, and a few strips of Katy-Perry-esque rhinestones stickers.

I was extremely proud of myself for what I thought was getting all my materials together in advance, so that I could really settle in with my wine, maybe put on some pajamas, and just fucking go to town with this project. But when I opened the press-on nails, tragedy: they didn’t come with glue.

Ladies, this meant a trip back to the store.

Do you know how shitty a trip back to the store is when you’ve already mentally gotten in your pajamas? So shitty.

Fortunately, though, before I made that trip, I also opened the rhinestone stickers. And it’s a good thing I did, because as soon as the air inside of that plastic contraption was released, I discovered that they smelled like death. Not just any death: MY death. Like, the death that would befall me if I kept inhaling whatever godless chemical was used to create these supposed works of art.

I won’t lie and say that for a minute there, I didn’t consider powering through with them anyway.

“But they’re so pretty!!” I whined to myself.

But logic prevailed, and so when I went back to the store, I returned home with both glue and new, hopefully nonlethal nail art, and was as such in possession of all of the following materials:

Glue, press-on nails, nail art, and nail art that wasn’t going to kill me. I AM A SUCCESS AS A GROWN-UP.

I began sticking the stickers onto the nails, and then glued the nails onto my own fingertips, and ladies, here is how they turned out:

Awesome. I fucking love them. I totally understand why people wear these. It’s so fun! The only thing is that now, I feel like I have to get my hair done as nicely, wear more makeup, put on a pair of heels and generally pull the rest of my look up to speed in order to allow my nails to have even the slightest amount of respect for the rest of my body.

Also, it’s now been about two hours since I put them on, and I will admit something to you: 30 minutes ago, I took them off as fast as I could. Once they lost their initial thrill – and once I started trying to type – they became the worst thing ever. So my mind is now changed. These kinds of nails look lovely, but you can’t accomplish anything in them. Their insistence on style over substance, on form over function, their very superficial beauty denies them the possibility to grow and achieve.